Jason Indrelie hoists the 15-pound, 3-ounce northern pike he caught  recently at Sheridan Lake.

By Kevin Woster

OK, so it’s not quite the weapon that Al Pacino used in Scarface.

But still, Old Toothy has a mouth full of teeth, and an inclination to use them.

Jason Indrelie, an 18-year-old senior at Hill City High School, had some hands-on experience with that reality recently at Sheridan Lake.

Trying to haul a thrashing 15-pounder through a 10-inch ice hole turned into an exercise in hand-to-mouth combat, during which Jason had to jam his hand - gloved, thank goodness - into the pike’s mouth.

But he got it out - the fish, and the hand, all fingers attached -  without any serious damage to his digits.

Nice job, Jason.

By Kevin Woster

By now, you probably know that SB96 was rejected by the South Dakota Senate today, 25-10.

That’s a fairly firm denial, once again, of the long-standing effort by some South Dakota landowners to get the right to obtain at least one license that they could transfer to a resident or non-resident hunter to hunt on that particular landowner’s property only. For those with commercial hunting operations, that would provide a guaranteed license for a willing buyer - something that isn’t available in the unpredictable drawing process today.

It could provide other landowners with a gift to a friend or relative.

Some argue that it also would push the state another big step down the road of commercial hunting and the transfer of public resource into private ownership.

Transferables are a big deal to a segment of the landowner community, especially west of the Missouri River, that feels disenfranchised by the state Game, Fish & Parks Department, unappreciated by many hunters and unrewarded financially for the cost of maintaining wildlife populations on their property.

They’ve been after big-game licenses they can transfer for years. GF&P and sporting groups have been just as dead set against it. And so far they’ve won.

I guess I don’t see that conflict going away, or the outcome changing anytime soon.

 

Two mallard hens get the big squeeze from a bunch of gabby greenhead drakes on Canyon Lake. Like other prairie ducks, the state’s mallard population could lose out if CRP acreage shrinks.

By Kevin Woster

There’s nothing quite like a gang of mallards, all worked up into a chattering, churching mass of feathers and fuss, as they were the other day on Canyon Lake.

Watching was fun. But it also got me thinking about the federal Conservation Reserve Program, and its projected declines, and how that will hurt the prairie duck population.

It will. It has to, maybe even more than it affects the ring-necked pheasant population, which is substantial.

Like other prairie puddle ducks, mallards need stable, dense upland nesting cover almost as much as they need water. CRP has offered plenty of that, most ducks have flourished. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that up to 2 million ducks a year may come from nests on CRP land.

But high grain prices and the admittedly valuable development of crop-based fuels makes CRP payments less attractive and threatens the future of the program. As CRP shrinks, duck numbers are likely to go with it.

There’ll still be plenty of mallards at Canyon Lake, of course. It’s the ducks out in praires and plains and potholes I’m worried about.

Cody Stoner of Spearfish shows off the 12-pound, 2-ounce walleye he caught through the ice at Orman Dam Jan. 10.

By Kevin Woster

Wow.

What else is there to say about a 12-pound walleye?

Cody Stoner caught the lunker ice fishing on Orman Dam Jan. 10. He hooked it on a Buckshot jig on 6-pound-test line, and it took about 15 minutes to hoist up through the ice hole.

Stoner saw the fish hit on his Vexilar, as a bigger-than-normal image entered the view zone. And a few minutes later, as he leaned on the little ice-fishing rod, he saw the dark shape cruising up under the ice.

“I thought it was a large muskie,” he said. “Then it got closer and I could see its face and the white on its tail and I knew it was a walleye.”

A big walleye.

Which leads me to stay it again.

Wow.

Doug Hansen, who retired recently as Wildlife Division director for the state Game, Fish & Parks Department, is the new guy on staff at Delta Waterfowl. He’s shown here doing some, uh, field work.

By Kevin Woster

Retirement? He don’t need no stinking retirement.

Apparently that’s what Doug Hansen figured after he left a 36-year career in fish and wildlife work with the state Game, Fish & Parks Department.

Hansen, a 60-year-old Centerville native once known for his blazing speed (by my standards) on the cinder track, is a former fisheries biologist who spent the last 18 years in Pierre as Wildlife Division director. That’s a spot that’s subject to some serious collateral damage from public-opinion bombs lobbed at the GF&P secretary.

Hansen retired last fall, and seemed headed for a new German shorthair and some lazy autumn afternoons on his small farm near Webster. But he couldn’t seem to fade away from wildife work. Delta Waterfowl of Bismarck, N.D., announced Friday that he’s joining them as a senior policy adviser.

(I wish somebody would hire me as a senior policy adviser. I’ve been advising people on policy for years, for free. And at 56, I think I at least qualify for the “senior” part.)

But back to Hansen. He will work on “agriculture, energy, climate change and national policy issues that directly impact waterfowl, waterfowl habitat and waterfowl hunting,” according to a Delta release.

“Doug is an experienced hand and highly respected among his peers in the North American wildlife community,” Delta President Rob Olson said. “We’re very pleased he’s on board.”

Hansen thinks, quite rightly, that his GF&P experience prepared him well for his Delta duties. He was an accessible-if-cautious spokesman for the agency, with a great deal of biological background and historical perspective. (Why he wasn’t smart enough to get a springer spaniel, I’ll never know.)

In 2007, he won the Seth Gordon Award - essentially the pinnacle performance prize - from the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

For more information on Delta and Hansen’s new job, see: www. deltawaterfowl.org

For a seriously senior policy adviser on a variety of subjects, give me a call.

I might be ignorant, but I’m never hesitant to advise.

 

A black-capped chickadee plays its merry tune in the snowy woods of Big Hill, just moments before the photographer did his swan dive into the snow.

By Kevin Woster

They don’t make Nikons like they used to.

At least, not Nikons I can afford.

Shortly after I snapped this frame of a chickadee up on Big Hill near Spearfish, I got my snowshoes tangled and fell on my face in the snow.

Yes, I know, I’m a man of many outdoor talents. Not only am I widely regarded as the worst flyfisher in the Black Hills, I am equally inept on a pair of snowshoes. (Don’t even get me started on my cross-country skis, unless you want me to take you down with me in a pile of splintered wood…or whatever they’re made of these days.)

But really, it wasn’t that rough of a fall. All of my aging tendons, and even my surgically manipulated knee, emerged intact.

Yet, my 55-200 zoom lens is toast. What an optical wimp.

Back in the day, I took worse tumbles lots of times with my old Nikon F2, or the cheaper Nikkormats - solid old cornerstones of the camera world that could take a lickin’ and keep on clickin’.

Once I dunked a Nikon FM in Lake Preston, cracked the back and let it dry out on the sunny side of a muskrat hut for a half hour or so, and went back to sneaking up on green-winged teal.

The clicks went on.

And once I left a 500 mirror Nikkor in its case on top my ‘73 Toyota Carina, sped off down the road and watched in the rearview as the case rattled off the top, bounced off the trunk and cartwheeled down a rural highway in Brookings County.

On the fourth or fifth bounce, the lens and case parted company, both ending up in the ditch.

I picked up the lens - its barrell scratched and bruised and slightly dented, but the optics seemingly fine - dusted it off and fired a few shots at a red-winged blackbird nearby.

Two years later, I was still using it.

Those were the days.

Those were the cameras. And the lenses, too.

A gift to Henry Woster from a group of Sioux Falls hunters almost 50 years ago, this Remington Model 1148 20 gauge is still the favorite scattergun of Henry’s youngest son.

By Kevin Woster

Dad had it right when he turned me loose with the 20 gauge.

It was a big step up from the .410 Stevens single. And it was an autoloader, which meant I could waste more shells on those long shots I just couldn’t seem to resist.

But still, I wondered if I should move straight up to a 12 gauge. Other kids my age were.

Dad never worried much about other kids.

“It’s plenty of gun,” he said, “if you point it right.”

Indeed, it was. Indeed, it still is.

It’s a sweet-handling, well-balanced shotgun that swings smooth and nestles itself easily up against the cheek and shoulder.

When it speaks, it means what is says.

The 20 goes most everywhere with me, once the fall hunts commence. It lies cased and silent behind the front seat of the pickup, just as it did back on the farm - ready for a quick grouse stalk, a sudden stroll through rooster-rich switchgrass or a farm-pond sneak on gabby greenheads.

Over almost half a century of service, my 20 has shot ducks and grouse and pheasants and doves. And if it ever misfired or jammed, I can’t recall it.

I’ve got a 12 gauge, too, of course, an old Remington square-backed Model 11 that my dad carried through the very last hunting season of his life. I shoot that some, mostly to remember him, and feel the solid recoil of the past.

But it’s the 20 I believe in - the one that endures my fickle infatuations with more sophisticated side-by-sides and over-unders, those with different bores and gauges and fancy patterns of wood and metal, as well as a magnum pump gun or two.

I can’t shoot any of them so well, nor feel so good at their steely heft in my hand.

It’s not even chambered for 3-inch shells, my old 20. And it’s full-choke, too, an out-of-favor constriction that’s considered especially inefficient with steel loads.

I guess maybe it is. I don’t know. But it still works fine for me.

When I point it right.

 

Two rooster pheasants play it cool on a recent winter morning at the Firesteel Creek Lodge near Isabel.

By Kevin Woster

Since I seem to be repeating myself in the discussion about guns down below, let’s take a break.

And agree to agree on at least one thing: For a non-native species, the ring-necked pheasant sure has found an indigenous spot in the hearts of South Dakota hunters.

I’ve got an idea for a new thread having to do with guns. But I need to catch my breath. I also need to ask a question:

 All this muzzle blast about gun control and not a pop from Steve Sibson?

 What’s up with that, Sibman?

By Kevin Woster

 Sparrow apparently doesn’t want to talk about fishing tournaments in the coyote-hunt discussion below. But I do.

 Are walleye tournaments a bad thing? Are they bad for angling? For walleyes? For the anglers who don’t compete, but simply want to fish the same lake?

How about bass tournaments, and those roaring rides across southern lakes, with men in well-advertised jump suits cranking 2-pound bass across the surface and stuffing them in the live well?

Good for the sport? Not good? Doesn’t matter?

Does competition and festivity turn serious outdoor hook-and-bullet sport into barbaric play, as Sparrow suggests in the coyote derby discussion?

How about these pheasant-hunting contests, where teams rush through meadows and blast half-dizzy, stocked birds for points?

Is that hunting? Is that bad for the image of hunting?

Or is it simply another case of “to each his own”?

By Kevin Woster

This just in from Dennis Mann, regional land manager for GF&P in Rapid City:

“The real idiot is Woster.”

OK, that’s not exactly what he said. He’s too nice for that. Besides, we grew up together back in in the Chamberlain-Reliance area, and we’re almost exactly the same age. Denny wouldn’t trash talk one of his homies.

Still, he would and did respond to my inquiry by saying that those “idiot tracks” I photographed at the Oral GPA could indeed have been from a GF&P crew spraying thistle, as some TIO readers have suggested.

My main Mann isn’t sure, because he didn’t do the spraying himself.  But a GF&P crew did spray 12 acres of the 640-acre Oral GPA in 2007. And it’s possible that cattail slough I photographed was on the spray list.

The GF&P’s regional tech crews treated 926 acres of land in the region last year, including 24 acres on the Sherberth GPA not far from the Oral GPA. Almost all of that treatment is for thistle, with a little leafy spurge thrown in here and there.

“We have an invasive weed problem down there, and we’ve really hit it hard the last three years,” Mann said.

The treatment areas are mapped by GPS so crews don’t cover the same ground unnecessarily. Mann couldn’t say for sure that the assortment of tracks I saw in the cattails were from his guys, but he also said they could have been.

“We try to get in and get out,” he said. “We don’t want to leave tracks all over.”

A guy would have to be an idiot to do that.  Or maybe a reporter.

There’s a difference, isn’t there?